This Is How Johnnie Walker Made the World’s Lightest Whisky Bottle

Tradition dictates that to decently bask a premium whisky you determination it from an elaborately chunky crystal decanter into an unfeasibly dense tumbler.

Weight has agelong been an outward signifier of prime successful the whisky industry, and the luxury manufacture successful general, but this week, Johnnie Walker launched the world’s lightest solid whisky bottle, suggesting that the aboriginal mightiness beryllium much astir cutting emissions that chopped glass.

At 180 grams (6.35 ounces), the teardrop shaped 70-centiliter solid vessel is considerably lighter than the 850 grams of the existent Johnnie Walker Blue Label vessel (without the liquid and the stopper), coming successful astatine one-fifth of the accepted weight. It contains a limited-edition Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra whisky. The plan has been 5 years successful the making, and it breaks with the brand’s accepted quadrate vessel for the archetypal time.

Designed with the assistance of Turkish glassmakers Şişecam—a institution successful the apical 5 of solid producers globally—the caller lightweight vessel has the imaginable to interaction some transport and accumulation emissions. Parent institution Diageo suggests that for each gram of solid reduced, astir fractional a gram of c is saved successful production. This doesn’t dependable each that impressive, but fixed Johnnie Walker sells an estimated 130 cardinal bottles annually, the c savings could, if upscaled, beryllium considerable.

For now, however, lone 888 bottles of the record-breaking Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra whisky volition beryllium released, costing $1,250 each—which, arsenic eco-statements go, feels a small tokenistic. Limited-edition tone releases are commonplace successful the premium sector, but for this innovation to marque a meaningful interaction it volition request to beryllium implemented crossed much Diageo brands.

At present, the lightweight bottles cannot beryllium scaled up, but Jeremy Lindley, planetary plan manager astatine Diageo, tells WIRED that the institution is already applying the newfound light-weighting cognition to different bottles. “We person brought down the value of the Johnnie Walker 18-year-old by 35 percent, and we’re moving connected reducing the value of our modular Johnnie Walker Blue Label vessel by implicit 25 percent,” Lindley says.

In the improvement process for the Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra, Diageo was granted 4 UK patents, and, successful a laudable move, the licence has been made disposable connected a royalty-free ground to assistance promote different drinks brands to innovate.